_Dre_ wrote:So I decided to uninstall the demo (and this is where I saw some similarities to Paavo's incident(s) occur). Upon trying to uninstall using the windows uninstaller I got a warning saying something to the effect that uninstalling the demo wouldn't be wise because the demo uses shared components with other programs.
Some clarification here:
When you install the Zurich demo, the scenery comes with a shared module, called Addon Manager, that is also used by both Cloud9 and Aerosoft as well.
Previous versions, in order to be 100% sure that, if the user already had any of the Cloud9 or Aerosoft products that used the same module, didn't remove it during Uninstalling.
Some users asked for an option to entirely remove it, that's why, starting with Zurich, the Uninstaller, at the end of the Uninstall procedure (when the scenery is already removed), asks if the user would want to remove the shared Addon Manager as well. OF COURSE, there's a warning informing that, if there are other products depending on it still installed (like Cloud9 EHAM, or KLAX, for example ) those products would stop to working.
So now, the user has complete control about how to Uninstall. He can either choose to remove just the scenery, or to remove anything, just like nothing would ever been there.
My FS has been on the fritz ever since.
All right. I know exactly what might happened, and I'll explain why it's not possible this issue could have been created by anything related to Zurich installer or uninstaller.
You should have figure it out already, because (as you said yourself), nobody else on our forum reported the problem, so it's quite obvious that, if we really had such a glaring issue in the installer, we would also have tons of complaints by now, given we had about 20000 downloads of the Trial version just in the last two weeks.
Also, I would like to point out that, even if you are the only one reporting this issue, we might still have investigated it, let alone to help you, if you took the care to report it on our forum for two reasons:
- We would have suggested you a solution about solving your problem immediately
- We would be notified of a possible issue, maybe a remote one, that only happens in 1 case out of thousands, but how do you expect problems will get fixed, if nobody reports to us ?
Do you really think we release an installer without testing it or, even worse, we'd intentionally create problems on user's machines ?
99% of the times we find "issues" in the installers, these are not really "bugs", instead, we keep have to find new strategies to *defend* the installer from being confused by wrong configs, hand-edited files with errors, files manually moved without correctly notifying the system (like installing on a certain drive, then moving it, etc.).
The installer works perfectly on a clean system, and by "clean system" I don't simply mean FS9 with no addons, but even a stuffed FS9, but with everything in the correct place, no hand-edited config files with errors, etc.
What's happened in your case, is that, somehow, the registry key for FS9 location has been lost or, it's not pointing to the correct location.
This can usually happen when installing FS9, then manually moving it to a different folder or drive, without updating the registry. Or, if reinstalling Windows, and restoring FS9 by simply copying folders from a backup, without runnning its installer first.
This happens to many users and that of course can confuse installers, since they can't find the FS folder. The original 1.0 and 1.1 installers for Zurich relied on the registry key to be correct, and they stopped installation if this was the case.
So, starting with Zurich 1.2, the installer will check if the registry key is valid and if isn't, it will ASK the user (by presenting the standard browse dialog) where Flight Sim is installed. Of course, on top of asking the user for the correct folder, it will also check if there is an FS9.EXE there, so you shouldn't be able to select the wrong folder by mistake, unless you happen to have a folder that is not the real one, with an FS9.EXE inside, and you intentionally choose that one...but I'd say this is highly unlikely.
So, either the registry was correct at start, or it was already wrong, and *only* in that case, the user gets the request to browse for the correct FS folder.
In this case, and ONLY in this case, once the user has indicated the correct folder, the registry is updated with the information given so, future installations should not fail anymore.
This is the only time that registry key is written, and it's done with the value supplied by the user, after double checking that an FS9.EXE (or FSX.EXE in case of FSX) is there. Note: this is happening during the INSTALLATION. So, if there was a problem with the installer that put a bogus key by mistake, you'd noticed already the first time you started flight sim after *installing*.
You are saying the issue happened, instead, during Uninstalling and that's simply not possible, because the only things that the uninstaller does, is to remove the scenery files, remove the area from scenery.cfg and, if the user replies "Yes" to the question about removing the Addon Manager, it will also remove the Addon Manager's files (basically just bglman.dll and a couple of other files, that wouldn't be loaded anyway if the dll is removed).
No FS files are removed during Uninstall, an NO registry keys are touched during Uninstall!
We don't even remove *our* registry keys, because a registered user would want to Uninstall as well, so we don't touch our registry keys during Unistall, in order not having to worry registered users with registration keys, in case they simply want to Uninstall for maintenance. But, on top of not removing our keys, we NEVER touch any FS registry keys in the Uninstaller!
It must have been something else, not related to the scenery, and it's proven quite easily, because nobody else reported it so far, as you noticed it yourself.
BUT, if you took the care to simply *ASK* for help on our forum, you would have had assitance anyway, even if the issue didn't really belong to Zurich, because what you are describing can only happens with a lost registry key for FS, and that's a very easy fix, and I'm safely saying the problem wasn't related to Zurich in any way, because the only time that key is written is during Installation, and only in an invalid/missing key is found, but NOT during Uninstallation.
So with the hopes that downloading and reinstalling the demo would put back whatever files the piece of crap took away I attempted to do so and in some sick twisted irony the demo will no longer install because it cannot find Flightsim on my system and you cannot put the location in manually like most addons.
Something else here do not compute;
The whole discussion about writing to the registry (that's the only place when something *might* go wrong like you described ) it's only related to Zurich 1.2 version. Previous versions refused to install if the registry was wrong, and they simply stop the installation, without taking any further action.
So, a corruption of the FS registry key, while highly unlikely ( I guess it might only happen if your PC crashed *exactly* while the installer was writing on that key, to fix it ), could only happened in Zurich 1.2 installer, that's the only version that write on that key.
BUT, it's the only version that also allows you to browse for a location in case one it's not found!
So, either one of these is true: if it's true that you couldn't reinstall the demo, because it couldn't find FS, this means you used a version older than 1.2. But, a version older that 1.2, didn't had even the remotely theoretical chance to corrupt the registry like you described, because it didn't had any of the registry fixing stuff, and never wrote on the registry in any way.
I went to their forums (not a member) to see if anyone else had these problems after uninstallation but I couldn't find any such posts
I even checked the areosoft forums just for the heck of it (still nothing)
And if you checked Cloud9 forums, you wouldn't have found anything similar as well.
I think that this is the simplest proof that the installer/uninstallers are fine, since (as I've said) we have several THOUSANDS of people downloading the Trial version every week.
While I would really like that *everyone* that downloaded the Trial, eventually decided to keep it, it's quite obvious that most of the people download the Trial just to check it out, so we can safely assume A LOT of users ran the installer, then the uninstaller, without having any problems with it, otherwise we would have the forum flooeded with complains.
Paavo's post was just a bit too close to home
No, it was reporting an entirely different issue, that it's not related in any way connected to installation/uninstallation, but instead was a core behaviour of the program when this is running.
Anyway, the issue reported by Paavo is outdated, becasue it has been already taken care of, since the version of the Addon Manager that comes with Zurich works in a different way comparing to Cloud9's:
If an outdated scenery is found, Flight Sim is NOT prevented to run, instead, the user will get a warning ONLY if flying in the area covered by the affected scenery and, even in this case, Flight Sim will no longer immediately quit, but it will still run over the outdated scenery, for the same duration of the Trial.
Of course, since the module it's used also by Cloud9 and some Aerosoft products, when updating with the Zurich version, even these sceneries will get the same behaviour. And of course, someone downloading a scenery from Cloud9, will of course get the last version without the need of updating to Zurich's one (that's to dispel the eventual objection that we are using one of the Cloud9's module shortcomings, in order to force people downloading Zurich demo)
are these C9/ FSdreamteam folks planting bugs on people's system
Once for all: I would like to clear up again this misunderstanding:
Cloud9 it's one company, and it was never owned/co-owned/shared or whatever by anyone of the FSDreamTeam. We have ONE developer that used to be employed by Cloud9, but left more than 1 year ago, and that's it.
FSDreamTeam it's a brand name of VIRTUALI s.a.s, my own company and, opposite to what some might think, it's a far older Flight Sim company than most of anyone else here, since it has been founded in 1993, when the stat of the art was Ms-Dos+Flight Sim 4.0, and it has been producing Flight Sim addons since then.
We simply never directly published anything (well, in fact we did a complete Italian scenery for MSFS 4.0 in 1993, and that *was* published under "Virtuali" name ), until today.
Cloud9 has been founded in 2004, I think, and for Virtuali it was simply a *customer*, that used Virtuali's sales system under license, but I never had any share or any other kind of interest in C9.
Some people might have mistakenly thought we were the same company at one time, because I was more active supporting users with issues with the Addon Manager on Cloud9's forums, than one might reasonably expect from what should be considered normal for a supplier of technology.
There are a couple of Cloud9 product were I was more involved with, namely the Phantom (which everyone seems to be very happy with), and the XClass series (ironically), the only Cloud9 product that didn't used the Addon Manager...
We decided to use FSDreamTeam name instead of Virtuali, for the simple reason that my company is also a very well known retailer of flight sim stuff (we sell FlyTampa boxed stuff, of course) in Italy, and I wanted to keep two entirely separate websites, since the one for retail is entirely in Italian language and selling only boxed stuff in Italy only, and the software developement site, selling downloadable product developed by ourselves worldwide it's a different activity, so it make sense using a new name.
And, just for the record ( so I can dispel another popular myth ), fact that Cloud9 hasn't released anything since last February, it's entirely unrelated to things like FS9 vs FSX, or anything like that.
Main reason is that the whole developement team was hired by Microsoft to work on the F/A-18 for the MS Acceleration Pack, and that work started exacly after Bergen was released, and ended just before Zurich was started. After that experience, we found to be able to work very effectively as a team, and felt self-confident enough to decide to publish directly, and that's it.
